Wolf Rain (Psy-Changeling Trinity #3) - Nalini Singh Page 0,136
body temperature.” Renault shivered hard and, hugging himself, hunched in and began to pace again. “I can’t consult top-level M-Psy because your friends have made me a fugitive, and the people I considered allies have shown their true faces.” A twist of his mouth. “They’ll pay. All of them.”
Withdrawal, he was in withdrawal. From Memory and the rush of the feed. “Do you need more medicine?” she murmured, because this was about survival, about stopping a monster, and, most important, about protecting her golden wolf’s wounded heart.
Renault jerked his head toward her, hazel-brown eyes glittering. “Yes.” A manic brightness to his face. “Yes, the medicine calms me and I need calm to break you.” Striding over, he took a pressure injector from his pocket. It looked like the disposable kind you could buy at most drugstores.
Memory’s heart kicked, her mouth like dust. “Narcotics affect my ability,” she blurted out. “Remember that first time?”
He hesitated. “You were in a coma because I overfed.”
“I’ve been tested since I’ve been . . . away,” she said, choosing her words with care so as not to unnerve his disturbed mind. “Any trace of a narcotic in my system and I can’t guarantee the transfer will work. Remember—you gave me a sedative that first time.”
He’d never again bothered with the drugs, because he either had his claws in her mind, or she was in a place where no one could hear her scream.
“You’re lying.” He jabbed the injector against her throat, hard enough to bruise.
“Doesn’t matter to me.” She shrugged. “At least you won’t be able to feed off me while I’m comatose or lost in delirium.”
A pause stretched thin as a wire before he shoved the injector into his pocket. Striding out of sight around a group of the tall metal shelves, he did something in the distance that made clattering sounds; then she heard boxes falling to the floor. When he returned, it was with another rope.
This one was long enough that he tied it around her entire body, pinning her legs and arms to the chair. “You won’t be going anywhere,” he said with a satisfied look followed by a giggle. “I’ll be back soon with my medicine.”
She wondered which drug he was on—it couldn’t be any actual medicine, of that she was certain. Drugs had unpredictable effects on psychic abilities—that part of what she’d said was no lie. However, whatever was happening with Renault, his abilities remained razor-sharp.
“Scream as loudly as you want,” he said as he walked away, tugging the hood of his sweatshirt over his head. “The local laws mean the warehouse has sound shielding. No one will hear you.”
Alexei will hear me, she thought on a wave of defiant love. My mate will always hear me.
A creak of sound, then a shaft of light in the distance that soon disappeared, in time with the clang of a door. She began to struggle the instant he was gone, but it took her only a minute to realize he hadn’t left any slack in the ropes.
“Think, Memory,” she whispered. “Think.”
The chaos of her thoughts narrowed down to the glint of a spoon inching its way across a table.
. . . nothing is useless if you know how to utilize it.
Stopping her struggles, Memory focused on the knot in the rope that bound her right wrist to the chair arm and reached for the tiny droplet of Tk power inside her, the one that couldn’t even knock a knife from Renault’s hand.
She began to nudge at the knot with her mind.
* * *
• • •
ALEXEI turned left into the Embarcadero, the pull of the mating bond a dull throb in his entire body as he drove on through the darkness that had fallen, onyx curtains eclipsing the light. Surely Renault wasn’t arrogant enough to bring Memory into the heart of DarkRiver territory? One glimpse of her and Renault would be overrun by leopards.
The busy public piers passed, followed by the more utilitarian ones, the buildings hulking shadows against the night sky. And still he was pulled forward. All the way to a section of the city that held a number of large business warehouses. The tug became blindingly powerful, encompassing all the warehouses in the area and driving his wolf to a feral edge.
Parking the Jeep, he got out and took several deep breaths.
As with any city, a thousand, a million strands of scent lingered in the air, but Alexei was a wolf, designed to sift through those strands without